questionposter

This does not help to logically figure out if religious people are broken or not. I suppose you can ironically believe it does though. Please use words next time.

Whether you like it or not, religion has helped form society, because people didn't have the scientific understandings and many philosophical views we have now, the only way they could explain things in ancient is god or god(s), and if god has some rules as to what not to do, you would follow them or risk being eternally damned.

Not only that, but religions like Jesus's advocate the rich giving to the poor, and many people were and still are poor.

Actually after doing some more research, I did find a good point which is that "people can pick and chose their personal resources", such as that conservatives may only visit Fox News, but I don't see what they would do differently without the internet. Without the internet, they would watch Fox news, and without TV they would listen to speeches by conservative or Republican candidates.

In fact, before the invention of all these communication devices, people didn't even know what the person they were voting for looked like, JFK even won because he appeared on TV instead of only on the radio, where many radio-listeners said Nixon won the debates and that JFK sounded like a weasle, but people on TV could see than Nixon looked nervous and that JFK looked confident and said JFK won the debates.

http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=kennedy-nixon

I don't see how the French don't have a word for "freedom" that can be understood in english, considering I can say "liberté" as a Freanch word, and the French fought against the Axis in WWII and gave the US the Statue of Liberty.

The US isn't the perfect place, but honestly there is a lot of opportunity for people to rise up and live a rich life. Unfortunately though, there are still things like immigrants being abused and human trafficking as well as minimum wage abuse, but these things aren't present only in the US.

There was no time at which the universe did not exist. "Before the universe" is meaningless.

I don't see how you can know that unless you were there at and before the creation of the universe. There is much evidence to support the notion that the universe was at one time an infinitely dense point containing all matter and energy, and since the universe by definition contains everything, before the existence of that point that was the universe, there could only have been nothing.

I'm not saying I know it's true, but if it is, then it would mean before the universe was created there could only have been nothing.

Although I suppose since technically time didn't exist before the universe that the universe has technically always existed because there was no way to count the time it wasn't in existence.

I have an a dragon who lives in my basement that only I can see, disprove that....

Now you know how God works.

To absolutely disprove god would require god like powers at the very least. Your suggestion that god hasn't been disproved and is therefore likely to exist is nonsensical....

I didn't say he was likely to exist, that was your assumption, I'm virtually completely atheist, not believing in any religious, magical or mystical aspect of any part of the universe, but if your going to try and say people are broken for believing in something or say we should simply assume something because it seems likely when really it can't be proven either way, I'm going to step in. I merely find it very unlikely god exists. However, this is not the case for everyone.

Yes they are, your axiom has no evidence to support it what so ever, how can it be an axiom?

Axioms inherently are assumed to be true, even in mathematics.

While I don't know that much about Siddhartha, you seriously need to do some study of the Holy Bible...

Yes I am aware of all those horrors and the Crusades, but I don't see Jesus actually advocating people doing those things, but perhaps as lessons.

You keep asserting this but you provide no evidence what so ever that it is true, only your assertion... Then there is the fact that the idea of hell is not synonymous with religion, only with a few quite recent ones, and if you had bothered to actually read the Holy Bible you would have noticed that the bible is not exactly a book of instructions on how to be peaceful.

I stated I have already read much of the bible, and on top of all that, many mono-theists aren't completely by the book, something you'd know if you actually tried to understand this issue. Most mono-theists, although take advice from the high-up people like priests and bishops, like to see god as being more logical, like Newton and possibly Einstein. In fact, it wasn't every mono-theistic religion that hated science, it was only Christianity. While Western Europe was in turmoil, the Muslim peoples were a prosperous group with colleges of philosophy and culminations of students for mathematics and the arts. It was actually during that time period that many religious Muslin or at least religious scholars boosted many things in science such as astronomy, anatomy and mathematical equations.

Please provide some evidence of this...

Are you serious? Ok, the most basic evidence there is:

99.99% of human DNA is exactly the same and in the exact same order. And, the .01% is already being used up largely by physical differences, such as skin, hair and eye color, slight variations in muscle density, height, weight, metabolism, the list goes on.

Furthermore it has been believed in psychology even since before modern times that the environments of people shapes them, and if you don't believe me, go ask a psychologist. This factor is not excluded from atheists. Someone who grows up in an non-religious environment has a higher chance of being non-religious, someone who grows up in a religious environment has a higher chance of being religious. To say atheists don't have this is to say being an atheist automatically makes you immune to the effects of your environment. Not only that, but religion is often connected to different experiences, the most prominent one being death. All atheists and religious people with the exception of maybe some psychopaths are effected by the deaths of their loved ones. But, religion builds off of this, and to someone who is agnostic, religion then becomes more important in their life because it is better to think about someone you care about being alive in some way. Atheists also have this and most probably do think about the possibility of a dead loved one being alive. To say atheists to not have the aspect of connecting ideas to important events in their life is unwise. And then ironically, there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that beveling in a religion impairs brain function in any way. This should be especially considered when looking at the existence of religious scientists. The only thing research has found is that when people pray very intensely, their brain changes in such a way that certain parts seem to interact less with each other, sort of like meditating.

I don't see how you aren't understanding me considering I've tried almost as many different ways to explain it as I have made posts in this topic, you must just be skimming through my posts.

I don't understand your photon inaccuracy scenario. If you've been working with lasers so long, your obviously aware we have the capability to aim a photon to a high degree of accuracy, especially gamma-rays since they are used for cancer treatment. I also never said that the red-shifted radio wave and the emitted radio wave would have the same energy or wavelength.

So if I shoot a gamma ray at someone who is moving away from me at 99.99% the speed of light, they will measure it as a radio wave, but the gamma-ray will still be very localized and occupy mostly a small area right? So even though it's a gamma ray, because of their frame of reference, they should measure a radio wave that was very localized. Seeing as how they can't measure it before the measurement, I don't see how localized something is before measurement can be relative.

It's a very bad idea to start with an axiom which contradicts itself or is inherently paradoxical.

"god can do anything" is such an axiom.

 

Can God set Himself a task that He can't accomplish?

 

 

"It's not "broken" unless you disprove it. God wants free-will, but it also wants Noah to survive, so the answer is in ways we can't currently explain to make a ton of room and gather every species."

Another answer is simply that it didn't happen, and , given that there's no actual evidence that it did...

A major problem with the "God did it and logic doesn't apply to Him" response is that I for one look at it and think "Well, they would say that wouldn't they, if I were setting up a religion I'd also have to include things like that to get round the impossibilities."

I don't see how an axiom can contradict itself unless it specifically states it, but there's also no actual evidence that what we are observing is actually reality anyway. In fact, all observation is the electrical signal of a photon that bounced off of or was emitted from an atom, which has already been changed position by the time we measure a photon as an electrical impulse.

There's not much to disprove god at this point anyway, and when numerous psychological elements are involved, that plays an important role, and I still wouldn't say religious people are broken because the things that would make someone religious are just as easily present in atheists.

That part that I've bolded undoubtedly leads to contradictions. It is easy to draw conclusions from axioms, the question is always whether or not an axiom is valid.

 

Why would a god who could do anything even need a boat? Why would he need a flood to wipe out the wicked people he created? While I'm at it, why did he create the people with the capacity to be evil if his intent was to later wipe them out (remember that Yahweh is omniscient, so he can never be surprised)?

 

It's sort of like asking "what happens to an object when it accelerates past the speed of light?". The axiom that objects with sub-luminal velocity can accelerate past c is a broken one. Any conclusion drawn from the broke axiom is fruit from the poison tree (Genesis allusion not intended).

 

With a broken axiom you can justify just about anything.

It's not "broken" unless you disprove it. God wants free-will, but it also wants Noah and all the animals to survive, so the answer is in ways we can't currently explain to make a ton of room and gather every species. And you can logically justify anything with any axiom, that's the whole point, the only problem with any of it seems to be that some parts of scripture seem to advocate violence.

I didn't say emotions (necessarily), determine anything, but rather emotions are determined by a state of a brain (this is the third time). To make it more explicit, a particular emotion is determined to be that emotion by a particular state of a brain. Invoking specifics like chemicals, probability and 'certain signals' doesn't change the fact that they have a cause, and therefore determined to be what they are. Whatever emotion arises is determined to be that emotion by whatever is its cause.

Well chemicals don't have a "cause", they are there simply because they have survived evolution, otherwise you need to be more specific as to what you mean by "state of a brain".

As an aside, if "Emotions aren't the product of a ....brain", what are they the product of?

You were adding the word "consciousness" to the mix, which is a tricky subject. Emotions are a product of the brain normally, but having consciousness doesn't necessarily have anything to do with that. But, even though they are a product of the brain, they are simply a chemical response to an action, they do not logically correlate to any question of morals, just because a chemical is released doesn't actually mean something does or does not deserve something.

Granted, you didn't say universal, my bad, but you do maintain a requirement for objectivity, so i ask how can you expect an objective initial condition for ethics under the definition you have taken? The definition is concerned with human value, yet when human value is used as an argument for an initial condition you declare it null because it's not objective. Like i said before it's not going to be, is it? This idea of objective conditions, unconcerned with human value, honestly makes no sense to me at all and i maintain it seems completely incompatible. Please explain to me where i'm going wrong as in my eyes you require a different definition of ethics for your argument.

Human values can be objective. If you do something simply because of your emotions, that's not even ethics, that's just you following whatever those chemicals compulse you to do. I haven't seen much to suggest ethics isn't logical.

Your dictionary link is inconsistent with your argument. You are asking for objective and universal statements for ethics

I don't think I ever said ethics was universal. If anything I said

But the values that are important to an individual are not universal, that is why it's important to be objective and why no single ethics or moral values is actually correct or incorrect. There is also the fact that inert matter itself does not have ethics, yet it is a large part of the events in the lives of living things.

yet you assent to a definition of ethics that deals with humans, their values, their culture and their conduct? It's an incoherent stance, no wonder it's leading to confusion.

It originally did deal specifically with humans, and how humans would have made the decision for how ethically logical it is to actually wipe something out. Ethics can still use logic.

To repeat what i said about emotions because you seemed to read something that wasn't there. Emotions are the product of a brain [of a] conscious being. I never said they were the product of consciousness, but rather the brain. Replace conscious with sentient if you wish, or just remove the adjective and noun altogether if it sits better with you. Emotions are determined by a state of the brain, to say that they have no cause is non-nonsensical.

Emotions aren't the product of a conscious brain either, they will get released by certain signals happening regardless of if they are in response to anything, and they don't determine anything because obviously you don't have to do what your emotions implore you to. The only thing they cause is a compulsion, and there is no logical correlation between a chemical being released and "deserve" or "not deserve".

Everything is easier when you assume your conclusion.

True, but science works in a similar way. The main axiom being that your observations are what you measure of reality. The structure of religion can still be built upon logical steps.

Noah can't fit that many animals on a boat ---> god can do anything ---> god can fit that many animals on a boat.

It's unlikely that the specific religion like Christianity would have survived this long if it was as illogical as you make it out to be.

It's more likely that it's been abused and altered over the years.

You honestly assert those things are logical?

They aren't "illogical" with the axiom of god being real.

God isn't dangerous? How many atheists stand on street corners preaching the evils of other people compared to his group of people? how many times a day do you hear on the news about some religious person asserting that one part of the population that do something his god thinks is wrong have to outlawed? How many atheists do you see asserting that anyone who is not an atheist should be killed? Strike that, even though killed is not over the top think of how often you hear of religious people claiming the rights of people who disagree with them should have their rights restricted in some way. in my state in a couple days we will vote on whether or not to restrict the rights of one group over another group for no reason what so ever other than religion.

I didn't say that the current scriptures of mono-theistic religions don't tend to advocate some violence, but religion can still be shaped for the purpose of doing good, and as far as I know that's what people like Jesus and Siddhartha intended.

Society was formed by religion? You really can't see a reason to form groups other than religion? i think it's more likely that religion was used to justify one group dominating another after groups had already formed. There is no doubt that religion retarded the growth of society during for instance the dark ages.

If you looked life in the old times like and how people lived life in ancient times, it isn't much different than how groups of chimps work, other than people knew how to farm. There was constant violence and theft among different groups, and it wasn't until someone said "you go to hell for doing that" did people able to settle down enough for the more advanced specialization of workers to form and more hospitable environments to form, and with the domination of other groups it would only create a more unified group. Newton's calculus didn't do much good setting in his desk for 20 years, it was only after the entire world got a hold of it that things could be accomplished with it, only by working together can we do things with it, and whether you like it or not, religion originally helped with that.

I have no problem with someone having a belief that there is some sort of god, if that was as far as it goes but invariably that belief results in the dehumanizing of people who do not share that belief and trying to convert others to your belief. The Christian religion we see today, as an example, was at one time very counter productive to civilization, dehumanizing and killing anyone who disagreed on even tiny things. But the Christianity we see today is not the all powerful religion it once was and that is the only reason why it seems as reasonable as it does today and even ow it is used to dehumanize others... to the point of death...

As I said there are numerous psychological aspects involved with the actions of religion, however these same aspects are present in atheists.

Well i can't say i can relate to that argument i'm sorry. Emotions are the product of a brain of a conscious being that's grounded in a cause and effect universe governed by physical laws, they therefore must correlate to reality because cause and effect determined their very existence. Many ethical values are also shared throughout the world so they also have a kind of global, although not universal, consistency and regularity which allows us to infer that they are likely something more than the product of a rugged individualism.

Emotions are not the product of consciousness, they are the product of sub-consciousness, or in other-words, everything except consciousness. Furthermore, "cause and effect" doesn't really exist in that type of sense, instead there is probability, but moreover that wasn't my point. My point was that the feeling of something is not logic for the action that might be the result of it, because it is merely the compulsion to do something, and does not logically correlate to "deserve" or "not deserve".

Just because we're an objectively arbitrary species in the arse end of nowhere doesn't mean our ethics don't matter. They are important and valued by "us", the only known originators of the concept. In fact, we, and by extension our feelings and emotions towards ethical arguments, and the only things that do matter because they deal with what we value and are important to us. We (which of course includes our thoughts, feelings and emotions), are the purpose.

But the values that are important to an individual are not universal, that is why it's important to be objective and why no single ethics or moral values is actually correct or incorrect. There is also the fact that inert matter itself does not have ethics, yet it is a large part of the events in the lives of living things.

Since you say neither side of an ethics argument really matters i'm wondering what is your definition of ethics? ...is this definition consistent with the argument you are presenting here?

There's simple definitions here http://dictionary.re...owse/ethics?s=t

Things are polarized, but people have not made effort for understanding and making things better for a long time, just look at how Republicans use to view global warming. Then there was the whole Cold War where people in Russia thought everyone in the US was a bunch of greedy pigs and everyone in the US thought everyone in Russia was a bunch of mindless slaves to their dictator. Then there was of course religious wars and things like the Crusades.

If anything the internet helps against this because people can share their points of view more easily. There's also college too with their philosophy classes.

The frame of reference is always that of the observer.

But you aren't constantly observing a photon before you have observed it are you?

You can't tell the difference between a photon that was emitted as one and Doppler-shifted to be the other.

I don't know what you mean exactly. So if I shoot a gamma ray and an ultraviolet ray and someone is measuring both photons traveling away from them at 99.99% the speed of light, one should measure one photon having a higher energy.

How did we get from a single-photon gamma source to a flashlight?

A flashilight consists of many individual photons, and have you heard of the absolute 0 experiments? People use lasers to shoot at individual atoms in 6 different directions to slow them down.

I sincerely believe that you have this backwards, and that it is religion that has built upon psychological elements.

I suppose it's both, but there are logical parts of religion. How did the universe get here? Something that did not have to exist by physical means could have created it, and this can include god. How could Noah have possibly fit so many animals on a boat? Well, god can do anything, so...

But then, there's people's loved ones who die, and they would like to think they are in a better place and things like that.

Yes, and that's a large part of the reason I find such an unfounded belief held so strongly to be such a danger to us all.

God isn't "dangerous" at all if the belief is that everyone should be a pacifist is it? 99.99% of human DNA is exactly the same with proteins in the same exact order, it's hard to think such a slight variation that is already being used up on physical features like skin tone and hair and eye color could cause such a big difference and that atheists and religious people are actually somehow different types people.

The way I view this, questionposter, is that none of those things require belief in an ill-defined three letter word with no evidence of existence beyond someones personal faith. All of those individual actions, areas of attention, things that help make society work... all of those things happen simply as a result of being a social species. The mythology of god(s) is not required to support them. That's how I see it, anyway. It is all extraneous and ultimately unnecessary.

Society might not have formed without god in the first place, because without it people couldn't see a reason to really support each other in larger groups.

I knew I shouldn't respond to posts after my fourth glass of wine, your reply isn't, in the cold light of day, quite so twisted, my apologies.

 

Whilst morals have a lot to do with emotion and subjectivity, logic does have its part to play. In the scenario of the OP this statement "You wouldn't ever attack something because there's some logic that says it should die." is false, if the negative consequences are known. I doubt anyone could logically or emotionally argue in the mosquitoes defence; we humans are the ones dying after all.

 

 

Negative consquences are known, but they would only mean something because of emotions, and what if there was a culture that didn't consider dying to be negative?

Logic doesn't have a part to play in the construction of the statements, only the deductions from those statements. Asking for objectivity in the premises themselves is asking for an objective ethical standard for the purpose of (supposedly), validation. We can attempt to get around it with semantics by, for example, stating that ethics deals with human values and human values are concerned with the well being of humans. Taken as a given we can then validate or invalidate a given ethical proposition, but since there's nothing in logic that necessitates this inherency in ethics it's therefore subjective (from a logical standpoint). Ethics and objectivity seem to remain at odds with each other, but personally i see no problem with this and it actually seems a good thing to me because we are the ones that hold the values after all.

There is one solution however, which is acknowledgement. Since ethics itself is based off of emotions which have no direct correlation to reality, niether side of an ethics argument really matters, which leaves it up to free will for whatever path it decides it wants to make.

So logically we don't actually have to not wipe out nor eradicate malaria.

Before measurement it is relative also, there is no absolute frame of reference.

But if it's before measurement there's nothing to be a frame of reference from.

There are not "oscillation patterns" because the electron is not oscillating.

 

The ordinary quantum mechanics of particles explains the well-known interference patterns observed when thousands of particles impact a screen in a double-slit experiment. Next is the sequence of patterns obtained when the experiment is repeated; each white point is where one electron impacted the photographic screen. (e) is the observed interference pattern when a large number of electrons has already impacted the photographic screen.

 

 

 

 

 

The electron is never "an oscillation in a matter field".

 

There is an old interpretation in quantum field theory, where an electron is an excitation of a fermionic field. But modern formulations do not support this view and fermionic fields are derived as unobservable systems, when doing certain approximations in the interaction Hamiltonian of a system of particles (electrons).

Yes, an electron can be excited and form interference patterns, and both of those things happen in quantum wave mechanics.

That faith is perhaps the worst possible reason to accept a proposition as true.

There's more than just logic involved here, there's numerous psychological elements that have built upon religion, and these same elements are in atheists too. Perhaps it isn't god, but there are easily things that are somewhat improbable that atheists believe in. Thought matter? Yeah right. Reincarnation? No proof of a soul. Finite universe? Astronomers cannot observe a boundary. With religion, it's like that. To a religious person, god isn't actually that improbable because so much can be justified by it.

When a black hole sucks something up and an object crosses the event horizon, the event horizon is temporarily deformed bear that point where it crossed, until the matter reaches the center. This notion is important because it says that the shape of the black hole in a way mimics that of the shape of the internal structure. Since a black hole on it's own is at least a sphere, the singularity must be at least sphere in order to warp space time to creat a sphere. But, the warping of space is a little more complex than that, the warping of space mimics a conical structure as well, however it is a cone from every side, so the internal structure must also be infinitely cone-like in some way. A black hole in of itself is it's own shape, however, we can break it down into it's component shapes, which leads me to think that actual shape of a singularity is the sum of polynomial planar structures to describe the curvature of it's space. I would do the actual math for it, but I don't really know much about the math of space that warped.

Thinking about it, we can't see an object with 4th dimensional units that would be described like X^4, but we can break it down into (x^2)(x^2) and we can see those things as planes. Only with this, we just have to work from (x^2)(x^2) to x^4

Inow,

 

I am thinking that mass delusion is very evident. Knowing the causes is what does not nescessarily change the facts.

And if knowing the causes is used to change the facts...well that borders on elitism and oppression. That one person would know, better than the rest of humanity, what is good for them. Maybe it is still a parent child relationship and the same chemicals are involved, and trying to rescue others from their delusions is delusional in itself.

 

But I am shifting the goal posts, and I apologize. My point is merely that you can know why people root for teams, and objectively view the stadium as a bunch of people just rooting for their side, with neither side being objectively any different from the other...and still hope your team wins.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

Are people that believe in the Olympic Spirit, delusional? Or was it a rather good idea to bind the warring cities of Greece together, to a "greater ideal"?

Although I don't necessarily agree with whatever disagreement you have with Inow, I think it is an interesting thought that you can still support things individually, because in order for many things to work, relationships to form, they need individual attention, but one person at least right now can't really do everything, so there needs to be individual people to give individual attention and support individual things for society to work, there needs to be individual components that all have their own support. The only problem is when people confuse those feelings with competitive and aggressive feelings.

I did? Where? I don't see where you asked that question; that phrase only appears in your most recent post. I know that I pointed out that you haven't actually defined what you mean by localized and that a question was ambiguous, so I'm guessing that you have mis-interpreted something.

The type of localization I'm talking about is the type that determines the most probable 4-dimensional coordinates to measure a photon. With gamma rays it's usually a very small area, with radio waves its usually very high.

A person detecting a radio wave is going to see exactly the same thing if it's a radio wave from the same frame or red-shifted to that wavelength after being emitted from another frame.

But that doesn't make sense, measured wavelength is relative, I'm talking about before measurement.

I suspect Terrell rotation would address this; I'm not sure but I think the problem is that you would not be able to aim your source well enough to distinguish between the targets.

So if I shoot a flashlight at something, it will miss it?

I think you have overconstrained the problem. i.e. you need to demonstrate that the conditional statement is true.

You already said "no" to "is 3-dimensional localization relative?" though. That means an electron drops, say, 30 energy levels and emits a gamma-ray, then even though it will have a small wavelength and occupy a small probable area, if you move away from that photon at 99.99% the speed of light, you would measure it as a radio wave, even though if it were emitted as a radio wave it would have a larger wavelength that would increase the 3-dimensional space it's highest probability expands over, assuming I'm interpreting you correctly when you say "no".

So if there's two people next two each other, and I aim two gamma rays at one but they are both moving away from the source at 99.99% the speed of light, only 1 will detect the gamma rays as radio waves because of how localized the gamma-rays are before measurement. Alternatively, if the source emitted two radio waves, both of the people should measure one radio wave or even both to the other person because of how delocalized the radio wave is, and they would measure it having a super-low wavelength.

That is quite twisted logic; if something attacks you then emotion is much more likely to inform your response than any objective reasoning.

 

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your use of the semi-colon, because otherwise you seem to be misunderstanding my point because the point of what I was saying was exactly that "if something attacks you then emotion is much more likely to inform your response than any objective reasoning. "

You wouldn't ever attack something because there's some logic that says it should die, you'd only attack it because of the chemicals released into your bloodstream, and those chemicals don't have a direct correlation to logic. It's just that if they are released, they cause a compulsion to do something. There's nothing saying that something actually "deserves" the response.